Perhaps Slacko etc. could automatically repair all malfunctions and perhaps any dents as well, if 01micko or BarryK or playdayz or jemimah can only find the time

Nobody expects that. My netbook has received no more nor fewer knocks than the average portable computer. It does not have any dents, and afaik, it's usb ports are in working order.

That said, my understanding is that one of puppy's goals is to work with older computers/outdated hardware. Older computers are more likely to have hardware dysfunction. So, i think it would be consistent with Puppy's goals to catch hardware dysfunction without crashing the OS, IMHO.

Please, Mr. Developer, I've got a gammy partition in one of the HDDs in this here computer (heat problem in summer), could you, please, make puppy realise by its own that I cannot install it THERE and expect to use it in SUMMER .
/MHHP_________________Celeron 2.8 GHz, 1 GB, i82845, many ptns, modes 12, 13
Dual Xeon 3.2 GHz, 1 GB, nvidia quadro nvs 285
Slackos & 214X, ... and Q6xx
Nämen, vaf....ln -s /dev/null MHHP

Is there something about my config or partitions that causes slickpet to save outside of the puppy directory?

Slickpet downloads both Pet packages and SFS files. They work in different ways.

A Pet will install inside your save file, using up space as it does so. It is only available for use on the save it's been installed on - for example, if you had four different test installs of Puppy you would have to install the package on each one.

An SFS, on the other hand, is intended to reside outside the save file and be loaded as part of the boot sequence. The main benefit of this is that it won't use up any of your save's space - the Open Office 3.3 SFS is 150MB, for example. The only real drawback of SFS files is that they can't easily be installed on Full Installs of Puppy, AFAIK. Assuming that they're compatible with the Puppy version you're using, the one SFS file can be loaded by all frugal and full installs on that partition.

Please, Mr. Developer, I've got a gammy partition in one of the HDDs in this here computer (heat problem in summer), could you, please, make puppy realise by its own that I cannot install it THERE and expect to use it in SUMMER.

The software world abounds with hardware fault-detection and remediation (unless we're talking about quantum computing). A google search brings up mcelog which, according to this site http://www.mcelog.org/, provides

Quote:

Advanced hardware error handling for x86 Linux.

They say all linuxes have (or "should" have) mcelog enabled. I don't see the mcelog in it's default location /var/log in Slacko, but i do see mcelog available in the Slacko repositories. Someone more expert than me would have to explain how to install and use. Sadly, it looks like it may be 64 bit only. Perhaps some awesome puppy programmer could make a 32 bit version of MCELOG?

That is not a demand-- it's a suggestion. Is it an unreasonable suggestion? Maybe, maybe not. Until Barry Kauler comes around and says "we do not want suggestions or bug reports", let's talk about Puppy Linux.

Machine checks can indicate failing hardware, system overheats, bad DIMMs or other problems. Some MCEs are 'fatal' and can't generally be survived. Many, however are not fatal, and mced can help you detect and report them more accurately.

An SFS, on the other hand, is intended to reside outside the save file

so, the puppy package manager is not downloading SFS's into my PSF?

Also, what if my frugal install is at the top of a partition (not inside a directory)? Ie, if, during Universal Installer, I enter "sda2" for the directory, instead of "sda2/slacko5.3.3frugal". Where will slickpet download to?

If a swap file or partition wasn't set up as a separate and specific exercise then you will not have one. A frequent recommendation on this Forum is that if your RAM is less than 512 MB then make your RAM + SWAP = 512 MB.

Puppy works widely and is free - if it doesn't work for you - seek help here on the forum or walk away - don't condemn it without firm knowledge or acceptable evidence - don't falsely deter prospective users.

An SFS, on the other hand, is intended to reside outside the save file

so, the puppy package manager is not downloading SFS's into my PSF?

Correct. As I said, SFS files are intended to reside outside of your save file. What Puppy sees as the filesystem is actually a combination of your save file, the OS SFS file and any additional SFS files you've chosen to load so it can load applications from any of those.

johnywhy wrote:

Also, what if my frugal install is at the top of a partition (not inside a directory)? Ie, if, during Universal Installer, I enter "sda2" for the directory, instead of "sda2/slacko5.3.3frugal". Where will slickpet download to?

The SFS would still be downloaded to the root directory of the partition, but still outside of the frugal's save file.

Looks like it's time... <puts on sunglasses> ...for a screenshot.

The attached picture is from my current Slacko session, which was a Live CD boot with the Slackosave on a USB stick. Note the following things:-

In the bottom left of the shot, the desktop icon for sdc has a yellowish square around it. This is the USB stick the save is on, and in this session the root directory of that device is '/mnt/home' - had I booted a Lupu 528 session using a savefile stored on sda1, the flaky hard drive, then that would be '/mnt/home' instead, and the USB stick would be '/mnt/sdc'.

I've opened the root directory of the USB stick, note that the title bar of the window shows the pathname as '/mnt/home' The file jre-1.6.31-slacko.sfs (helpfully highlighted by Puppy in bold) has been downloaded using Slickpet. There are also a few other SFS files there too. The actual Pupsaves, all for LiveCD installs in my case, are stored in /mnt/home/Pupsaves

If a swap file or partition wasn't set up as a separate and specific exercise then you will not have one. A frequent recommendation on this Forum is that if your RAM is less than 512 MB then make your RAM + SWAP = 512 MB.

Thanks, Jasper. I just went with the saluki recommendation, which was "you have enough ram, no swap needed." Thank you, jemimah!

Is puppy just for hobbyists, or for normal people too? I could be wrong, but I think Barry wants puppy to be as care-free as possible. When it's a bit more bullet-proof, I think the marketing will take care of itself.Last edited by johnywhy on Thu 31 May 2012, 08:14; edited 1 time in total

Program itself works great and shows video like it should however... The populated-list window does not show the thumbnails, just a blank space with a small label and some numbers in it. Info about the programs it finds is there (r/h side of window) and there is a split-second where it seems to want to display the thumbnail graphics but they disappear in a split-second too.

Went through the options in UMplayer, my changes there didn't help... even tried a reinstall.

First tried with just installing the qt473.... bunch of 'dots' showed up in video (but the thumbnails are now working) so downloaded and installed the umplayer-686 you mentioned... same dots appeared in video... did some tweaking in umplayer and got rid of those, probably would have worked the same with the umplayer-486 but... too late to know now?

Because of the way puppys are put together they have some particularities. Puppies are put together in layers. Where pets are concerned the layers are a bit like rooms, or storeys. Where sfs files are concerned they are like islands. A main puppy sfs is read-only. It loads its active (read-write) files into ram at first run, if you have enough, or ram and swap if you don't, as on old p-II and the like hardware. When you make a pup-save file the main sfs loads, and stores, the read-write system in the pup-save file. When you add pets you add them to the pup-save file (you have to remaster to change any files in the main sfs). You add them more or less as additional rooms. In the new room the new program does what it does, and passes the product out to the central asembly room.

Sfs files you add you "float" in the partition sea, along side the main sfs and your pup-save. To use sfs files you bridge to them, at start-up or, in newer puppies, by fly-bridging to ones as you need them. This description is of the Frugal Install model. It is what puppy was designed around.

With a frugal install you can run into problems in downloading pets when your incoming pet is too big to fit in the space that remains in your pup-save file. This can happen when you download lots of pets, or when you use smallest-possible pup-save files. When you do, before you do, you have to pause your download and enlarge your pup-save file, then resume your download.

When you crash a download, when it stops for not having room to install all the incoming files, you cannot resume. You have to restart the download, after making enough room.

As far as I know puppy's package manager does not check download size against available space before it begins a download. You have to do this, or you can be surprised by a "disk-full" failure. When downloads crash-stop you cannot save them. You have to calculate before, or watch the personal storage monitor in your puppy tray and pause your download when it turns orange or red. Then you can move other files, finished downloads and such, out from your pup-save file. You can put them in your /mnt/home (float them in the partition-sea around your puppy files). After making room, you can resume the download you paused

I don't know if you can pause and resume ppm download-installs. I rarely use auto-download-and-install.

When you don't catch a download before it crashes, when you using CLI, or auto-downloading with ppm, so you know your pup-save is being over-filled until the download crashes, you can usually remove the partial download by opening the ppm window, going to the "installed" pets list, highlighting the name of the partially downloaded pet, and then selecting the 'remove' option.

For a manual download, go to the folder the download was going to and delete the partially filled file.

As far as I know a stopped-by-smash-up download cannot be resumed in puppy. I think it is a browser issue: The browser has to organize its stop and mark its stopping place to be able to resume from where it left off.

Puppy was not designed for "full install". But puppies can be made to work "fully installed". But they cannot be made to work using all of the space on a disk or in a partition (unless something in the basics has been changed since I experimented).

Puppies require space around them in their home-partitions. They need room to float in. If you make "sda2", or "sdb4" or "sdc" or whatever your pup-save file, your puppy is going to choke. It will lock up, it will crash, it will come to a full stop. Puppies must have space around their save-files.

The partition space around can be filled with other files, pet, sfs, files, folders with data, music, video, etc., but not full. It can be another operating system's space, but it has to be space. All folders and files in the space are reachable in puppy, through /mnt/home, or, if the disk has multiple-partitions, or there are card and flash-drives, through mounting those. The only thing a puppy cannot handle is a monolithic partition filled entirely with Puppy. Puppy cannot install as Microsoft does, with every bit of disk except the MBR its own one single save-file.

If you run into difficulties that seem like disk-malfunctions, your hardware crashing, locking-up, losing data, etc., before throwing things away, check that you have space in your home partition around your puppy files. Make sure your pup-save has enough free-space to fit what you are downloading into it. Or make sure you have set up a download-to location outside your pup-save, and that it has enough room. Navigate your download to a file in your /mnt/home, or mount another partition and then navigate to that mounted partition (going up the file system to /mnt and then to the partition, sda(n), or sdb(n), or whatever. A folder in /mnt/home or another mounted partition you can fill to as full as the whole partition then, if you want to.

So, the basic rules are, 1. puppy systems partition space around them. And, 2. you have to have enough room to finish your download in the place you are downloading to. And 3. you always have to stop your download yourself, by pausing it. Paused downloads can be resumed. Crash-stopped ones cannot be. Rule 4 will be that to recover after a crash-stop of a download you have to remove the partial-file and start again, or, when using the ppm, use the uninstall feature to remove the part, and then start again with your fetch command. Parts of component files that remain after a remove command will be overwritten by the new download-and-install of the file.

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